News June 2017

Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island Generating Station announced on Tuesday that it would close around September 2019 pending major policy reforms. Staff at the site, which was home to America’s worst-ever nuclear accident in 1979, when a reactor suffered a partial meltdown, will start transitioning out within six months of the final shutdown. Chris Crane, president and CEO of plant owners Exelon Corporation, called it ‘a difficult day’ for the plant’s employees, but said that a drop in energy prices has left nuclear power prohibitively expensive.

US President Donald Trump is poised to pull the country out of the Paris climate accord, US media report, quoting senior officials. The 2015 accord for the first time united most of the world in a single agreement to mitigate climate change. It was signed by 195 countries out of 197 in a UN group on climate change, with Syria and Nicaragua abstaining. In a tweet on Wednesday, Mr Trump said he would announce his decision within the “next few days”. Climate change, or global warming, refers to the damaging effect of gases, or emissions, released from industry and agriculture on the atmosphere.

Do your worst, Mr Trump. The renewables train has left the station, and won’t now be stopped. Donald Trump is so wrong to be taking the US out of the Paris accord on climate change, but not for the reasons you might think. No, it’s nothing to do with the fact that, without America, the accord is pretty much dead in the water, and that Trump thereby threatens to condemn the planet to the oblivion of manmade climate change. It’s that the agreement’s in any case non binding targets for reducing greenhouse gases are no longer relevant and will almost certainly be naturally exceeded of their own accord without any help from inter-government actions. There is therefore absolutely no reason for the US to withdraw. The fracking revolution alone, by replacing coal with cheap gas, is already causing US emissions to fall precipitously.

US companies in industries from manufacturing and energy to information technology have reacted with dismay to the prospect of President Donald Trump withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, warning that pulling out of the accord would hit jobs and investment. Businesses have raised concerns about the impact on markets for products that can help cut greenhouse gas emissions, and warned that countries remaining in the accord could impose retaliatory tariffs on American goods. However, some groups have said they will press ahead with investments in emissions-reducing technologies, saying they expect continued long-term growth in demand despite the lack of support from the US administration. Leading US companies including Apple, Facebook, Google, Intel and Microsoft have taken out an advertisement in US newspapers on Thursday with an open letter to Mr Trump arguing that the Paris agreement generates jobs and economic growth by expanding the markets for innovative environmentally friendly technologies. It warns that withdrawal would limit US access to those markets.

Citizens Advice has petitioned the Competition and Markets Authority to investigate the district heating sector due a “lack of choice and control” for consumers. The charity says it has “considerable concern” over the balance of power between suppliers – which face no competition as “unregulated” natural monopolies – and consumers – who risk being overcharged as a result.

Despite President Donald Trump’s pledge to bring back U.S. coal jobs, hundreds of laid off miners in Wyoming—the nation’s largest coal-producing state—are still seeking work. But these ex-miners might find hope with a most unlikely employer: a wind power company. The American arm of Goldwind, a Chinese wind turbine maker, has announced a free program to retrain miners to become wind farm technicians, The New York Times reported.

One of Donald Trump’s key election pledges was to revitalise the US coal industry, reopening facilities and putting thousands of miners back to work. Now President, though, in reality Trump is digging himself into a deep hole over coal. “For those miners, get ready because you’re going to be working your asses off”, Trump told a pre-election rally a year ago. Now a key Trump adviser is openly contradicting the president, saying using coal makes little economic or environmental sense.

Clients have included Greenpeace, Nuclear Free Local Authorities, WWF Scotland and the UK Government’s Committee on Radioactive Waste Management.

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